It began with constant changes of home and town during his school days. Although Eino Leino was younger than his fellow pupils, he was the natural intellectual leader. He was the editor of the school magazine Vasama and the influential literary figure of his class; as early as his grammar-school days he was translating works by Runeberg from Swedish to Finnish.
His schoolmate J. Leino began his studies in at the Imperial Alexander University of Helsinki; but the literary world quickly sucked in the many-talented young man. His studies were cast aside, and as early as he published two collections of poetry, Maaliskuun lauluja 'Songs of March' and Tarina suuresta tammesta 'The Tale of the Great Oak'. Leino was an avid writer; nothing seemed to be sufficient. Poetic works followed in swift succession, and at the same time he acquired mastery of one branch of literature after another.
He had just turned twenty when - together with his brother Kasimir Leino, a poet, critic and theatre director and a prominent figure in the literary world - he founded the journal Nykyaika 'Today' , unique in the Finnish cultural world of its time.
It was not established to push the cause of language or national identity, or of any real literary outlook. Its objective was to be a journal with an international outlook, presenting, analysing and commenting on the whole world of culture and art.
It passed on the latest news from abroad. The goal was ambitious, and the result was of high quality; but in Finland this has never guaranteed a journal a long life. It was wound up a year after its appearance, and the Leino brothers were left to pay its debts. In this post he pounced upon everything with the zeal of a reformer. The Finnish Theatre, the Finns' favourite child, found itself in the midst of an unprecedented tempest.
The young theatre critic had no mercy on Kaarlo Bergbom, the founder of the Finnish Theatre, who had been its director since The reviews were sometimes deliberately overcritical, but their general view of how Finnish theatre should be developed has proved very much to the point. Eino Leino's name finally became engraved on the consciousness of the general public when he became a permanent columnist for Helsingin Sanomat in The birth of the columnist meant the stage debut of the culture critic Leino.
Authorities in the artistic and academic fields were treated without any great respect. Writers, politicians and academics all felt Leino's lash. It was now difficult to adopt a neutral attitude towards him. There were many who regarded him as a powerful opponent.
Leino became a public figure par excellence. The great inspirations for Leino's early poetry were the Kalevala and Finnish mythic poetry. In this respect he was linked to the artistic trend of the time, and he became the first and most important shaper of Finnish neoromanticism.
In it he aimed at a new and dazzling synthesis of Finnish traditional poetry and ideas drawn from the most recent European literature. What surprised readers most was the new type of imagery in the poems, an imagery freed of all explanatory content and touching the most delicate, sensitive and dangerous layers of the human psyche. This new aspect was so dazzling that it blinded most of the critics.
Very few people understood the importance of the collection immediately. Every poem is infused with the struggle for freedom and the problems associated with finding the truth.
Again and again the individual is confronted with the fundamental questions of life. What is one's attitude towards death, love, other people? How far can one go in the process of self-realisation without harming others? The collection marks the beginning of Leino's bourgeois period, the most passionate in his life, and also a short one. In Leino had fallen in love with the translator and commercial correspondent Freya Schoultz, the exotically beautiful and red-blooded daughter of his landlady.
Love kept his creativity at a high pitch. The year was a time of passionate living and creating. Leino established his first home in the bourgeois setting of a large seaside flat, and the following year saw the birth of the couple's daughter Eya Helka, who was to remain Leino's only child. In addition he published columns under the nom de plume 'Teemu'. The political situation of the period with its dramatic events provided material aplenty for columnists.
The activities of revolutionaries in Russia became more intense, culminating in the general strike in autumn Most of the columns of are in one way or another connected with the political struggle.
Particular targets were Russian oppression and the politics of acquiescence of the 'Old Finns'. Leino was a clear-cut Young Finn and an advocate of passive resistance. A settled life both enabled and forced the poet to turn towards prose. In between these three works he also published a trilogy of plays: Lalli , Maunu Tavast and Tuomas piispa 'Tuomas the Bishop'; This productive period was crowned in by a further collection of poems, Halla 'Night Frost' , a selection of poems translated into Finnish, Maailman kannel 'The World's Harp' and a Finnish translation of Goethe's play Iphigenie auf Tauris.
The family idyll lasted only a short while. Leino found it impossible to get used to a conventional life-style, and the couple parted ways in the spring of Never again did Leino succeed in creating a lasting relationship or a settled home. It was typical of his whole life that he was continually walking out, taking only the most essential things with him - as he wrote to his friend Otto Manninen on 1 July "I left everything behind except my book collection and my papers and departed bag in hand.
In , he was granted a State writer's pension. They are noted for the extensive use of Finnish folklore and mythology. The most frequent themes in Leino's poems are love, nature, and despair. Additionally, he made the first translation of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy into the Finnish language.
The origin of the name is German Enewald Aginwald. Leino — Leino, Eino, finn. Dichter, geb. Eino Leino. Look at other dictionaries: Eino Leino — Briefmarke zum Dictionaries export , created on PHP,. Mark and share Search through all dictionaries Translate… Search Internet.
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